Supermarket Souvenir: Bologna Bubblegum

A photographer on Flickr named Hamish Grant has found a collection of over 200 35mm Kodachrome slides of travel and marketing posters from the 1950's and 1960's. Here is one of the gems. See the full gallery on Flickr. (hat tip to BoingBoing) FUN READING A list of the 50 greatest travel books is up at Brave New Traveler. What's number one book, according to Ms. Michaela Lola? Ernest Hemingway's A Death in the Afternoon. ELSEWHERE RideAccidents.com describes itself as "the world's single most comprehensive, detailed, updated, accurate, and complete source of amusement ride accident reports and related news. The site includes a record of fatal amusement ride accidents in the United States since 1972, and, for the past nine years, has recorded all types of accidents, including many from outside the United States."

China's Terra-cotta Warriors and Horses were arguably the most significant archaeological excavations of the past few decades. Discovered outside the town of Xian, the well-preserved artifacts originally were used as decoration for the tomb of Qin Shi Huang, who was likely the first emperor of China (around 220 B.C.). This year, twenty of the terra-cotta warriors will be touring the U.S. First stop is the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art in Santa Ana, Calif., from May 18 through Oct. 12. After summering in Orange County, the exhibit makes stops in Atlanta, Houston, and Washington, D.C. Tickets for the Santa Ana show start at $22 each. UPDATE 1/10/2008 Atlanta's High Museum will host the exhibit in November 2008. It moves to Houston's Museum of Natural Science in May 2009. Then, D.C. gets it at the National Geographic Museum from November 2009 through March 2010. Via THE MERCURY NEWS MORE ON THE BLOG Offbeat travel news. PHOTO BY HELGA'S LOBSTER STEW, VIA FLICKR

It's that time of year for taking stock of where we've been and where we're headed, not just in our daily lives, but in our travels. When we recently asked readers how the weak dollar is affecting their plans, we received a flood of more than 200 comments. Many discussed seeking out alternatives to Europe—such as Argentina, Thailand, India, Croatia, and China—and staying closer to home (Alaska, Texas). We have our own list of places that have recently piqued our interest (more on that after the jump), and we'd like to hear from you: Where are you headed in 2008? Photo of a little cove in Bermuda, between Warwick Bay and Horseshoe Bay, by Buff Strickland (yes, that's his real name). Montenegro: a newly independent country that's small in size, but big on the next-destination map. Lalibela, Ethiopia: Home to 11 intriguing ancient churches carved into the Ethiopian earth. Brooklyn, N.Y.: These days, the most interesting part of New York is across the East River. Sangkhla Buri, Thailand: A Thai cultural melting pot with Buddhist monks who are commonly spotted crossing the old wooden bridge at sunrise. New Orleans, La.: As the city continues to rebuild for years to come, there's plenty to rediscover. Bermuda: With sand as soft as sifted flour, blue-green water, and an influx of low-cost flights and affordable lodging, the island has never been more appealing. Caraíva, Brazil: A car-free, rustic beach town at the southern tip of the Brazilian state of Bahia. Waitsburg, Wash.: Near Walla Walla, the sleepy town has neat shops and cafés like the Whoop, a hit with both wheat farmers and wine snobs. Yarra Valley, Australia: You don't have to like wine to enjoy this region northeast of Melbourne (but it helps).

A colleague of mine and I were recently marvelling about the speed and frequency of online travel giant Trip Advisor's site redesigns. Like clockwork, just yesterday I received yet another announcement that the website had a new look, and this time the changes aren't simply cosmetic. Trip Advisor has always been a community site, successfully leveraging the voice of everyday travelers, but its earlier incarnations sought a careful balance with 'expert' opinions from, for example, the New York Times travel pages, Fodor's, and other big travel brands. Trip Advisor's new design is not so cautious, and it's inching ever-closer to abandoning the voice of established 'experts' once and for all—or maybe it's just more accurate to say that the site continues to place greater trust in the hands of its users. The trend is not new, of course, but it's no longer a simple fad. Publishers who are still wedded to the idea that social media—the voice of the masses—is an indiscriminate and largely useless cacophony of uninformed opinions are missing the bigger picture. Social media is getting better, and the information the digital phenomenon produces is more useful by the day. There are three inter-related trends coalescing right now that should make all old-brand publishers think hard about how they want to position themselves for the future... First, critical mass has been reached; the number of people willing to share their stories boggles the mind, and it continues to grow at an astronomical pace. Second, social media publishers are finding super-smart ways to reward valuable members, and to give special prominence to really good user-generated content. It's no longer enough to be a prolific contributor to a website. Unless other readers like you, and express their sympathy by voting for you, well, your voice is just never heard. Only the strongest survive. Finally, publishers are mining huge databases of behavioral information to connect you to people who are more and more like you—it's not just that you're getting opinions that many readers say are useful, you're getting opinions that are useful and are also attuned to your tastes. The 'similarity' math that many sites are now using is taking us into some new, periodically comical territory, and it's hard to know just how far it can be pushed. I checked my Netflix 'friends' page a few days back, and saw that I had some new 'recommended' buddies—folks I did not know in the proper sense, but who were between 56 to 78 percent similar to me. When I took a quick look at these proto-buddies, well, they were an awful lot like me. When someone gets to 99 percent, I'm thinking I may dig a hole somewhere and disappear...I don't want to know me. The social media 'revolution' has always had the ring of exaggeration, but give the emerging model some thought and it seems far more plausible. Web sites with a travel angle—from Yahoo! Travel, to Trip Advisor, to Yelp—are becoming huge publishing empires built on the foundation of user generated content. The social media systems are only getting stronger—and they will continue to find new ways to identify the best user-generated content, and to match it to your interests. A serious question looms, and while I'm a bit tired as I write this, I don't think it's overstated: In the future, will the experts be you, or us? What is the future place of the editor? I tend to place my bets in the middle—and so I think that the publishing model of the future will probably succeed best where it manages to find new and compelling ways to let experts—folks who have dedicated a good part of their lives to learning a field—share their opinions with ordinary folks with informed passions. There's still a great deal of value left in the idea of craft and expertise. But surely the era of the unchallenged 'expert' opinion is behind us, and only the nostalgic are looking back.